Tommy Wirkola is a new name for the horror genre but his audacious, hilarious and blood-splattered Norwegian Nazi zombie movie Dead Snow, shows that this is one director who has done his homework.

If the film isn’t making you laugh, cutting something in half or having intestine pulled out of one of the characters, then its winking at the audience with some reference to some of the best-loved horror masterpieces.

Tommy Wirkola has exclusively talked to us about his top five horror movies of all time, and as a list of definitive titles to watch, it’s hard to argue with. Enjoy…

Tommy:

I have been watching horror movies from when I was at a very young age. I blame that on my oldest brother who is 10 years older than me, who brought home the most horrific horror movies for me to watch, when the stuff I should have been watching was things like Sesame Street and Disney movies.

To ask me to only pick five horror movies, is like asking Hannibal Lecter to pick his favourite part on the human body… anyway, here it goes:

TOP 5 HORROR MOVIES BY TOMMY WIRKOLA

5. Drag me to Hell

I LOVED Sam Raimi’s comeback to the horror genre. It was suspenseful, scary as hell, funny and gross. What more can you ask for?

4. Braindead

It’s incredible that a movie can contain THAT MUCH blood, and still be as funny as it is.

3. The Descent

I love this film. It’s scary and never have I felt that out of breath in a movie theatre. Claustrophobic and suspenseful! And it was refreshing to see a movie with an all-female cast.

2. The Evil Dead 2

What can one say? All the things that I love about moviemaking combined in ONE FILM.

1. The Exorcist

I still remember the first time I saw this film. I was alone at home… it was in the middle of winter, which in north of Norway means total darkness, and it was in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep for days. I still find it scary, shocking and incredibly well acted. A favourite!

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Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man) hasn’t made a horror movie in almost a decade (if you count The Gift), but it is the genre where he cut his teeth and created cult hero Ash, played by Bruce ‘This is my boomstick!’ Campbell.

Drag Me To Hell is Raimi’s return to the genre, although he certainly hasn’t been idle in the horror: his production company, Ghost House Pictures, introduced Western audiences to The Grudge and 30 Days of Night.

Drag Me To Hell takes as many cues from Raimi’s old work as some of his more recent Ghost House work. In the vein of the best 70s horror, it is at its heart a morality play, although one with a wicked sense of humour and slightly less gore than your average splatter-horror flick.

Alison Lohman plays Christine, a Midwestern girl trying to make her way in Los Angeles alone. She’s a loan officer at a bank and her boss subtly suggests that making ‘hard decisions’ will help her earn a promotion. Her ‘hard decision’ turns out to be denying an elderly gypsy woman an extension on her mortgage so the bank can repossess her property. Some drama ensues and Christine ends up with a gypsy curse: for three days, she will be tormented by an evil spirit that becomes increasingly more aggressive until it finally – yup – drags her off to Hell.

In this instance, a very literal fire-and-brimstone place beneath the Earth. There’s the usual bits about stopping the curse, the skeptic boyfriend (Justin Long) who ends up coming around to help, and the monetarily-motivated fortune teller who may be Christine’s key to beating the curse.

No need to spoil the ending, the first two acts of the film are Christine being in turn startled, scared, and beaten to hell (pun intended) by the demon while her boyfriend shifts from atheist liberal skeptic to believer. The last act turns the tables a bit and is where Raimi’s classic comedy-horror gets an opportunity to shine. No holds are barred and for a film rated 15 Drag Me To Hell is as genuinely scary and – in the best sense of the word – horrific as you could want.

Horror fans should be well satisfied with Drag Me To Hell, probably the best entry into the genre from a major Hollywood studio in years. And Raimi fans will find a lot to like as well: a familiar car plays a sizable role, and there is an extended reference to a scene from Evil Dead 2 that Sam does a brilliant job of turning on its head.

If there’s anything to complain about, it’s that for the first two acts the film relies a lot on ‘jump’ moments and loud musical cues for its scares – but by the time Christine decides to start kicking demon ass, the movie is in full swing. The ‘twist’ at the end is so obvious it’s almost taking the piss out of dreck like The Sixth Sense – and the final scene should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. But it’s an excellent, fright-filled ride to get there.

Now then, grab your chainsaws and head to the cinema. Got it?

Groovy.

[story by Jason Mical]

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It’s the summer. And that means that, as weekend box office law states, all films released now must be angry, loud and full of massive robots punching each other.

But weekend box office law has another rule for the summer – that Pixar gets to release a new movie, and it’ll make all the other films look a bit silly in comparison. And this year that film is Up, the new US weekend box office number one.

What made Up so popular? Was it the groundbreaking technological accomplishments? The mature storytelling? No, it was all the balloons. Balloons are fun. Wheeeee!

So Up is the new US weekend box office, a fact that continues Pixar’s two strongest traditions – their extraordinary run of producing critically-acclaimed movies that are gigantic commercial successes and their even-more extraordinary run of producing miserable films about incredibly depressing subjects.

Seriously. Last year’s Pixar film was about the world’s loneliest robot, 2007’s Pixar film was about a character who couldn’t excel at his job because of his appearance, and Up is about a pensioner grieving the loss of his dead wife. Hardly Dude, Where’s My Car, is it?

Still, congratulations to Up, and we look forward to seeing next year’s Pixar movie – an exploration of social and physical decay that consists of nothing but a two-hour black and white image of an Arctic tundra soundtracked by the distant, sporadic sound of a crying woman. Here’s the weekend box office top five!

1 – Up (We can’t wait for Up to be released on DVD. We’re going to have a directional movie marathon comprising Up, Down, Sideways and the as-yet unreleased masterpiece Sort Of Diagonally Zig-Zagish) $68,200,000

2 - Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian (Coming soon, Night At The Museum: Scuffle At The Bath Postal Museum, where Ben Stiller travels to Somerset to witness a hilariously zany night of mail-based escapades. Starring Robin Williams as Thomas Moore Musgrave, Steve Coogan as postal historian Frank Staff and Ricky Gervais as a fat envelope) $25,500,000

3 - Drag Me To Hell (Originally this film was going to be called Drag Me To Hull, but the name was changed after it was decided that Hull is actually worse than the real hell in every conceivable way, and shouldn’t be joked about) $16,628,000

4 – Terminator: Salvation (This week it was revealed that an alternate ending for Terminator: Salvation was for John Connor to become a terminator himself and kill everyone, which would have obviously been a better ending than the one that was filmed. Although, having said that, if John Connor suddenly woke up and realised it was all a dream, and then the entire cast of the movie waved goodbye to everyone like at the end of The Railway Children that would have been a better ending too. What we’re trying to say, we suppose, is that Terminator: Salvation is rubbish) $16,140,000

5 - Star Trek (Oh Chris Pine, stop being so coy and just record a version of Rocket Man that you sing with two other versions of yourself, would you? Gah) $12,800,000

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All eyes have been at Cannes this week and if the sight of the bikini clad sleaze wasn’t enough to draw attention to the town, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie swanned in to put the place on the front page.

Who cares about films when you can have really, really, really good looking people around…

Meanwhile Terminator Salvation has been seen and received the critical mauling of someone using a phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range. Also everyone is talking about the new internet site that tells you when to piss in the middle of a movie. Seemingly people are overlooking that fact that it spoils major points in films and are hailing it as some sort of revelatory bladder-relieving miracle.

Back to Cannes though for the big news of the week…

Headlines:

Inconsequential Grammar:

The mass critical circle-jerk has begun for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as it screened in Cannes this week. Being hailed as another triumph from QT, this WWII set drama stars Brad Pitt as a leader of a group of soldiers who go about scalping Nazis. Because glorified violence is fine, as long as it’s against those god-damned un-human German Nazis! Grrrr!

Space Rogan Josh:

If Seth Rogan wasn’t polluting every American comedy/animated movie currently released between 2007-present, he has now managed to cross both the Atlantic and the Galaxy! Announced as the voice of the alien in the upcoming Pegg/Frost penned movie Paul, he plays their E.T. companion after escaping from Area 51. If it was a Rob Schneider movie nobody would give a shit.

Palme d’Bore:

This years Cannes Film Festival comes to a close with a bunch of films that you’ll never hear of again scooping the top prizes. Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon was the obvious Palme d’Or winner (apparently). Elsewhere Inglourious Basterds picked up an acting win and Ken Loach picked up another award that will surely appear mundane and bitter to him.

I ain’t ‘fraid of no childhood raping:

Dan Akroyd spills some more beans about the upcoming Ghostbusters sequel currently being scripted. Apparently involving a spunky female leader who we’ll ‘love’ and some neuron splitters and inter-planet interceptors that let the new ‘busters slip from dimension to dimension… We’ll leave that one with you.

Must See This Week:

Drag Me To Hell:

If you like your horror slick and stylish then you can’t do better than Sam Raimi’s return to the genre. After creating to superb Evil Dead trilogy, old Sam has been passing the time making some guff about a kid with spider-like super-powers – Boring! Now back where he belongs, he gives this horror all his visual panache, wit and trademark Oldsmobile.

Must Not See This Week:

Angels & Demons:

Nothing else is quite leaving the cinema aisles with the same dual action stench of zero characterisation and stale pacing like Angels and Demons. Add a sidekick that makes you long for another Hanks/Volleyball collaboration there is little to like. Not even Hanks in a Speedo can save this!

Video Corner:

Fantastic video from Black20; Transforminators leaves us speechless to its utter genius that we will let it do the talking. Top marks for spot-on Bale impersonation as well.

Any comments or videos you want us to shout out? E-mail us at filmfoam@hotmail.co.uk

[story by David Scarborough]

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So it looks like hecklerspray’s run of Actually Pretty Amazing competition prizes continues apace.

This time we’ve got a stunning prize for one reader – a pair of tickets for an intimate London screening of new horror movie Drag Me To Hell, with a pre-screening drinks reception attended by director Sam Raimi, as well as stars Alison Lohman and Justin Long.

It’s all happening in London next Monday, and frankly we’re considering entering it under an assumed name. But if you want a crack at winning this inexplicably good prize, details are after the jump…

So, to win the Drag Me To Hell screening tickets, all you need to do is answer this question:

Which actor has played a different character in all three of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films?

Send your answers to hello{at}hecklerspray.com with the subject line ‘No, Drag ME To Hell’ and a winner will be randomly picked by the end of the week. The prize includes tickets only, so you’ll have to make your own way to the screening. And you must be free next Monday. UK readers only. Blah blah blah. Good luck and that, yeah?

There was a time when you only had to mention the words ‘Sam Raimi’ and ‘horror movie’ to get Hecklerspray wetting its pants in anticipation.

But after seeing the trailer for the Evil Dead director’s new film Drag Me To Hell, we are holding off on the incontinence nappies for the time being.

The idea of it is pretty good. Basically, main character Alison Lohman, desperate to impress her banker bosses, is cursed by some ugly woman with a funny eye after refusing to grant her a mortgage extension.

It means that some demon has been unleashed to drag her back to hell.

All good so far. But something just doesn’t see right. The effects look pants, while the demon itself looks about as scary as a squirrel with a bad temper.

Also, where is Bruce Campbell? The jury is out, Raimi.